NEW YORK (January 4, 2002)-- Democracy Now!, the
award-winning national radio show that was banned in
August from the progressive Pacifica Radio Network
returns to the Pacifica airwaves on Monday, bringing
to the general public the voices of some of the harshest
critics of the "war on terrorism."

On Monday, Goodman will be reunited on -air with former
co-host Juan Gonzalez for the first time in a year, when
Gonzalez resigned to found a national grassroots campaign
to reclaim the Pacifica stations. Guests will also include filmmaker
Michael Moore.

Democracy Now! was banished from Pacifica as part of
the Pacifica Radio crisis, which many community radio
activists say was an attempted corporate takeover of
the only progressive radio network in the United
States. The crisis moved toward resolution last
month when three lawsuits against the Pacifica board of
directors were settled, and the board of directors
was reconstituted. The new board majority is determined
to return the 50+ year old listener-sponsored network
to its peace and social justice mission. One of the first
moves of the new board was to vote at their first
board meeting, a conference call on December 29,
2001, to bring back Democracy Now!

Democracy Now! is the flagship national program of
the Pacifica Radio Network, and its host Amy Goodman has
won numerous journalism awards. But, as part of the
ongoing conflict within the Pacifica Radio Network,
Goodman was forced off the airwaves at most Pacifica
stations and joined the ranks of dozens of journalists
who were censored or banned by Pacifica.
Democracy Now!'s host and producers were physically
and verbally harassed out of the studios of WBAI in New
York City when that station was "re-programmed" by
Pacifica management and board leaders and subsequently
banned from four of the five Pacifica Radio stations:
WBAI in New York, WPFW in Washington, DC,
KPFK in Los Angeles and KPFT in Houston.

But rather than stop producing the show, Democracy
Now! has expanded. In addition to broadcasting on Pacifica
Station KPFA in Berkeley, the program aired on
community radio stations around the country and has
begun broadcasting a daily national TV show which airs on
Free Speech TV--channel 9415 of dish network
(Satellite TV)-- and public access cable tv stations
around the country.

Since the attacks of September 11, Democracy Now!
has provided some of the most incisive programming on
war and terrorism to be found anywhere on radio or
television. On December 10, 2001, Democracy Now!
broke the news of a University of New Hampshire
professor's study documenting that close to 4,000
civilians have died in Afghanistan as a result of
the U.S. bombing.
Other recent guests on the show have included Ahmed
Rashid, Pakistani journalist and author of 'Taliban:
Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia',
discussing the oil-slicked road to war in Afghanistan,
Tahmeena Faryal, spokeswoman for Revolutionary
Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA),
Arundhati Roy, activist and author of The God of
Small Things, Howard Zinn, Professor
Emeritus of History at Boston University, author of
A People's History of the United States, and Noam
Chomsky, author and linguist at MIT.

Pacifica Radio has been embroiled in controversy
since1999, when the Network's managers shut down KPFA of
Berkeley. That shut down caused the largest protests
in Berkeley since the Vietnam War. In December 2000,
Pacifica "re-programmed" its New York City station,
WBAI, by firing and banning long-time programmers
and eviscerating the station's progressive political
programming. Last August, Pacifica suspended Amy
Goodman and removed Democracy Now! from the Pacifica
airwaves.

But on December 12, 2001, it was announced that
plaintiffs who sued the Network reached a settlement with the
Pacifica board of directors that could end years of
strife at Pacifica. The settlement created a new
interim board of directors that draws its members from
Pacifica's local advisory boards, its current board majority,
and its board minority. Now there is hope among Pacifica
Radio activists that the crisis is coming to an end
and they will have a chance to rebuild the progressive
radio network. Among the issues yet to be resolved
are the return of the fired and banned producers at
network-wide and resolution of the news stringers strike
against Pacifica Network News.

Several General Managers of Pacifica Stations have made grumblings
hinting that they will be refusing to broadcast DN! on their station.

If you live in the signal area of WBAI- NY, KPFK-LA
KPFT-Houston or WPFW-DC and on Monday January 7 and you DON'T hear
Democracy Now! In Exile on your Pacifica Station
Call the Pacifica General Manager at your station and demand
Democracy Now! be broadcast immediately